Honestly asking - surely this isn't something that the United States would seriously consider in this day and age, is it?
Changing Selective Service rules is a long way off. Changing the rules is even further from instituting a draft. Instituting a draft across the universe from the sort of arbitrary conscription implied by the article. Arbitrary conscription of people from a well paid industry with the resources to hire good lawyers...yes it's a logical possibility. However the premises of the logical possibility include a centralization of state power in a way that excludes the interests of capital. Basically, conscription of forty year old IT professionals would require US political culture to become more like a Stalinist state. And a change to US military culture which has been built to maximize the benefits of a volunteer army, like better motivation than conscripts.
>On a side note, I once melted the face off of a GI Joe with a magnifying glass, burying him in a shallow grave in the backyard in an attempt to conceal the crime. That GI Joe, I presume, is now rolling over in his grave.
Oh yeah? I used to destroy those cheap green "armymen" with firecrackers and sometimes gasoline.
With respect to military culture, its rigidity is all over the map, and mostly depends on the nature of the unit's mission.
Drafting or enlisting? I don't think that anyone born after 1953 ever was drafted.
this could be a way of silencing dissent, by drafting 'troublemakers' and putting them under martial law. Seems farfetched today, but in a situation of external threat, who knows?
The military is the antithesis of hacking culture: - Play by the rules, even if they don't make sense, because I said so. - Listen to people above your paygrade, even if they are clueless, because that's the way we do things around here. - There's a simple rulebook and checklists to follow to complete your task, and if you don't follow the rules you get punished. - Low pay for extraordinary work. - Endless meetings and powerpoint slides.
I know a lot of security folk, and none of them like any of these things. I don't know a single one who would enjoy making 40k a year while shining their boots for some drill instructor.
What a total joke. You want to get good hackers? You gotta pay up and stay the out of their way. This is not a problem you can throw bodies at, and you can't coerce people to be good at hacking.